A player of contradictions, he's a piece the Heat need

His first tattoo? Chris "Birdman" Andersen turns over his left forearm. He points to a Chinese symbol in black ink amid the body by Britto.

"Good,'' he says, translating the symbol.

He turns over his right forearm to show another Chinese symbol.

"Evil,'' he says.

What do you do when your life is a contradiction? When your public self clashes with your private story? When you bodily broadcast yourself like a cartoon figure through tattoos and a Mohawk haircut, but move quietly and are really, as Heat teammate Dwyane Wade says, "a man of few words?"

To understand Andersen — to at least understand this story about him — you need to hear why he chose these first tattoos and, for the time, ignore all the others on his body that provide cover for one of the more amazing journeys in the NBA.

Think of it: He was abandoned by parents at one point. He rode a bike eight miles on a dirt road to school each day. He graduated from a class of 34. He quit community college. He played in China at 20. He moved from one minor basketball league to another to yet another before — ta-da! — landing in the NBA.

And then the real crises began. Drugs. Career issues. Legal concerns.

All that, and he's an important piece and fan favorite as the Heat start the Eastern Conference finals tonight against Indiana?

Andersen, 33, looks down at those forearm tattoos he received at age 21 while playing in a minor league in Albuquerque, N.M. When asked why he chose them specifically, he answers, "That's me, I'm kind of between good and evil."

He offers nothing more. You sense a door closing, and not for the last time in this story. When asked why he's between good and evil, he says, "It's all personal, man."

The door closes a little more.

When asked why it's so personal, he says, distantly now, latching the door shut, "It's just how it is."

Andersen's path to the NBA began on the dirt roads of Iola, Texas. He didn't just bike on them. He ran over them with the discipline of someone expecting to go somewhere else.

His home, two miles from the nearest neighbor, was on a dirt road called Bluebonnet Lane – at least that's what his mother called it, though the road had no official name.

From there, he ran to Country Road 120. He hurdled electric fences on the way and ran through cow pastures, sometimes surprised by a change.

"Momma, did you raise the fence wire?'' he'd ask.

"Aww, you caught me,'' she said.

Linda Holubec says she sometimes raised the wires on his route a few inches when she felt his growing size warranted it. She was tough that way. Enlisted for Vietnam. ( The war ended before she got there. ) Rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Demanded Houston coach Clyde Drexler ride it with her, too, if he wanted to recruit her son. ( It rained the day they scheduled a ride).

"Don't worry," she says from that home in Iola, an hour from Houston, "the fences' electricity was usually turned off when Chris jumped them."

Looking back, it's unclear if Andersen was running to something at that point or away from it. Iola, he says, provided a lifetime of motivational fuel because too many people there, "considered me a troublemaker who said I'd never do anything with my life."

His youth can be politely called turbulent, starting when Holubec and her three children, including Chris, "lived in a tack room in a bar after [her husband] ran off with his girlfriend,'' she says.

She starts to tell the story, but then trails off, saying, "I don't want to get into that."

Later, for a few years, Andersen lived in a foster home. Then, one day, Iola High coach Rob Stewart watched a summer-league pick-up game and saw this kid, "blocking everyone's shot, running the court, dominating the game.

"I knew everyone around for 30 or 40 miles and I'd never seen this kid before," Rob Stewart said.

Stewart and Andersen began a bond took Isola to rare success for a small school and continues to this day. "My third son,'' Stewart calls Andersen. They text or chat daily. He plans to visit Heat games with his family later in the playoffs.

The same can't be said for everyone in Isola, starting with his mother. She found out he joined the Heat the same way she finds all basketball news about him: A friend called and told her.